Author(s): Mindi Price , Dr. Lauren Brewer

Presentation: oral

Students report spending more time on social media websites and apps than they spend studying and that this negatively affects their grades (Li, 2010). What causes students to engage in social media usage at a sacrifice to their academic pursuits? We posited that trait self-regulation would be negatively correlated with time spent on social media. 86 students completed the short form of the Trait Self-Control Scale (Tangney, Baumeister,& Boone, 2004), which measured participants' trait self-regulatory capacities. Participants also were asked how much time in minutes they spent on several social media sites on a typical day. We also asked students to estimate how much time in minutes they thought they used social media during a typical day. Results indicated that trait self-control was significantly negatively correlated with participants' own estimates of their time on social media during a typical day (r= -.28, p= .01). Trait self-control was correlated participants' estimates of their total social media usage. We posit that people with low levels of self-control lack the ability to disengage from social media.

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